Dave and I have come to the conclusion that winter vacations in snowy mountain retreats are the ultimate.
In short–Banff is so stunningly beautiful I can’t imagine anyone not wanting to visit it.
I don’t know if I could adequately put in words how lovely of a time we had up there. So I will show you pictures instead.
(Above + below are views from the terrace of Banff Springs Hotel, where in summer time you can have a meal)

We spent time at Lake Louise on New Years Eve – and even went on a sleigh ride around the lake! It was so charming.

(Later that evening Dave and I had planned out being out in town. But when it came right down to it, all the places we wanted to be had a cover charge…and it was too cold to loiter on the streets till midnight. So…we bought a bottle of wine and spent New Years in our hotel room…watching a Mythbusters marathon. Huzzah!)

(it was SO cold that day)

New Years Day was relaxed. We went for a drive intending on visiting a Ghost Town, but the road was closed from snow. So we kept going down some other back roads and discovered some beautiful locations where no one else was around.

Lake Minewanka

Two Jack Lake–Totally frozen over.

(These boots are older than me. They have lived through winters in Northern BC. They are better than my new winter boots that I got only last year. My mom is not getting these boots back.)

The roads were not as treacherous as I thought they would be. The only time we were delayed was going into Banff (they closed the road between Revelstoke + Golden–we had to wait in Revelstoke for 3 hours while they cleaned up the accident)

While the roads were not as treacherous as I thought they would be, it was still too dangerous to just stop wherever to take pictures. And many of the viewpoints have not been cleared of the snow so there was no way to get to them. Therefore…all the following images were taken while I hung out of the window of our car. That’s safe, right?